Cloud Computing
Essays

In analyzing 3tera, the RackSpace Cloud and GoGrid as to which is the best Cloud Computing vendor, their relative strengths and weaknesses both from a functional as well as security standpoint have been taken into…

From the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer

Infosys is a company that began operating on a shoestring budget in 1981 in Bangalore, India. The company started very small but has been able to grow tremendously over the years because the managers were willing to take risks. This essay looks at the possibility of the company moving from a red ocean of bloody competition, to a blue ocean in which creative forces move the company into waters that have been previously untried.

Zara: IT for Fast Fashion is a unique case study in that it powerfully illustrates how a lack of IT integration and process efficiency can over time force an organization into complacency, lowering the standards of…

In today's world of technology, it is imperative that you stay current with what is new in the IT world. What makes this particularly challenging is the pace of change in IT systems, and the continual need to make sure they align to a department, division and in the case of the City of Elizabethtown, an entire city. Never before has it been more critical for government municipalities to get the most value possible out of their IT investments. With continual budget costs and an orientation to judge investments purely on short-term cost reduction, investments in IT must be seen as atypical and worthy of much greater focus and effort to integrate the into municipalities. This is to first increase the value delivered, second to ensure the hard-earned taxpayer funds used to buy and upgrade equipment, operating systems, networks and applications are put to the best possible use, and third, to make absolutely sure they deliver the greatest value necessary in order for the City of Elizabethtown to get the greatest value. Those are the foundational elements of this proposal and the values it is based on. As the migration of 250 workstations across 10 departments and 5 locations has a budget of $100,000 and the performance gains possible from transitioning their operating systems form Windows XP to Windows 7 is expected to be significant, the cornerstone of this proposal centers on delivering excellent public service ultimately to the citizens City of Elizabethtown. As Microsoft has also recently indicated they will be permanently discontinue Windows XP support on April 8, 2014 according to the Microsoft website, the urgency to get this upgrade completed accurately, completely, and with precision is clear. It seems like every six months something new is coming out. While it is true you do not need every new gadget out there to stay current in the IT world, you do need the most recent operating system to ensure the compatibility, security, scalability and long-term Return on Investment (ROI) of IT spending. I work for the City of Elizabethtown as the Network Administrator. While a Network Administrator's job is mostly configuring and maintaining servers, I also manage all the workstations and make sure they are getting the most recent updates that are on the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) server. I am also in charge of preparing budgets for these workstations and purchasing them. I have been with the City now for 5 years and we have running Windows XP SP3 on all workstations. With all the new threats out there and with Microsoft ending their commitment to support Windows XP in 2014 I have decided to upgrade to Windows 7. The reason I have decided to go with Windows 7 instead on the upcoming release of Windows 8 is simply because Windows 7 was released 2 years ago and most of the bugs and kinks are gone and there is stability in the program. Microsoft has also been able to get much greater levels of software support for their 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 Application programmer Interface (API). The current Windows 32-bit based applications on the XP systems throughout the city will eventually become obsolete, some as early as twelve months from now in 2013. The message is clear from Microsoft however; they have made Win64 API-based development a strategic priority, investing heavily in Independent Software Vendor (ISV) relations efforts with their strategic partners. Microsoft has also modified and improved the device drivers for Win64-based systems so that the network security, speed and precision are also significantly enhanced. While Windows NT, XP and Windows 7 are all based on the Windows NT Kernel shown in Appendix 4, Microsoft has greatly expanded the Windows 7 kernel to support a more multiplatform-based strategy than ever before. The Windows 7 kernel can be seen in Appendix 3. Microsoft will make a major announcement later this year with Windows 8 support for the Windows Phone, and will also seek to bring the Win64 API to the Apple iPad via Apple iOS 6. This Apple operating system will most likely bring Microsoft Office to the Apple iPad. Current discussions with Microsoft indicate that any servers running Windows 7 components will be able to support non-Microsoft devices. As the City of Elizabethtown begins to adopt smartphones and tablet PCs including the Apple iPad with increasing regularity, the IT department will need to also consider the platform requirements for supporting these devices. This tend in IT is called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Departments in City Hall, the Elizabethtown Police Department, Fire Stations, Gas Department and Public Works all could significantly increase the effectiveness of their workflows by integrating smartphones and tablet PCs into their workflows in the future. While these are not core requirements of this transition from Windows XP to Windows 7, 64-bit edition, it is another consideration that needs to be kept in mind. The transition from XP to Windows 7 will enable our IT department to better serve the entire city in the future and set the foundation for eventual adoption of mobile devices. It is not a matter of whether this will happen, only a matter of when. Another aspect of the transition of the 250 workstations is the versioning of their applications and the significant potential speed increase they can attain when they are migrated form Win32 to Win64-based versions. This speed increase has, according to Microsoft and its ISVs (development partners) been as high as 60% on calculation-intensive applications including Microsoft Excel, SQL Server and other database applications. This speed increase is due to the result of applications using memory more efficiently and also having greater support for multithreading, which is literally the ability to have an application complete several concurrent, even potentially conflicting tasks, at once. The transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 will certainly require a hardware upgrade for workstations, and if the architecture of the workstation cannot support the minimum requirements of the operating system, another will need to be purchased. This is also the case with software licenses for all applications that are today running in Win16-based API Mode, by far the most prevalent and popular API that Microsoft has developers supporting. To see where the Win16 API fits into the architecture of these operating systems please see Appendix 4, Windows NT Kernel Architecture. An application written to support the Win16 API will also run in Windows XP, Windows 7 and 8. As the kernel architecture shows in Appendix 2, Win32 APIs dominate the XP framework. Fortunately Windows has designed in Win16 to Win32 API migration and compatibility, and is working to ensure applications written on both of these standards will work with Windows 7 and beyond. What all this means for the upgrade of systems is that the planning steps need to pay very close attention to standardizing on Win64-based applications to gain the full performance boost form upgrading the systems with hardware to make them capable of running Windows 7. The hardware upgrades and fine-tuning will only be as valuable as the operating system-level and most importantly, application-based upgrades completed. In conclusion the primary goal of upgrading the systems to avert obsolescence needs to be balanced with potential to significantly increase and improve speed over time.

The pervasive adoption of mobile computing devices, combined with cloud computing and the quantum gains in application software are creating a globally diverse collaborative platform. These elements taken together are deliver an exceptionally fast and pervasive level of disruptive innovation across all sociocultural and technology sectors (Bernoff, Li, 2008). The impact of this disruptive innovation is so significant that IT departments have to drastically reorder their policies in smartphones, tablet PCs and other devices that employees are using to streamline their lives (Thomson, 2012). Smartphones, tablet PCs and devices like them are becoming so pervasive today that they are considered a formable cultural and socioeconomic factor in the planning and execution of business and government strategies well into the future (Bernoff, Li, 2008). This platform of technology is so pervasive, that it requires in-depth support to enable integration of systems to supporting data and network access to ensure the stability, security and reliability of performance. All of these factors are leading enterprises to create end-to-end platforms and technologies to enable the use of smartphones and tablet PCs' integration into the most complex workflows companies have (Saltzer, Reed, Clark, 1984). The large-scale investments by Google, Microsoft and others in the area of context-based computing and algorithm development, the continual investments in a technique called cyber-foraging, which is the ability to determine a person's location and interests based on the messaging provided by their smartphone or tablet PCs are nascent yet showing very significant potential (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). In conjunction with these technologies is the continued reliance on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to determine relative location of smartphones or tablet PCs and interlink them with local Web servers that have potentially relevant information (Satyanarayanan, 2001). Of the many technologies used for defining relative location of mobile devices to Web and cyber-foraging-based servers, the most reliable to date has been Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) (Welbourne, Balazinska, Borriello, Brunette, 2007). RFID has also emerged as the most reliable and secured technology to build middleware components of an enterprise-wide mobile platform on (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). Middleware is software that unites the operating systems running the variety of diverse legacy and 3rd party systems enterprises rely on for successfully running their businesses on the one hand, and the application layer of the mobile software that users actually see on their systems. Based on the analysis completed for this study, middleware is a critical component for the overall performance of any mobile network. In evaluating the role of mobility in general and specifically the technologies needed to enable it on a global scale, the need for capturing, interpreting and providing insights in real-time back to mobile devices is critical. One of the most successful approaches for accomplishing this has been developed by Nokia, which uses a cyber-foraging technology that defines relative location of a smartphone or mobile device, also capturing its characteristics and the interests of the owner (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). Cyber-foraging seeks to capture, classify, aggregate response to and then selectively publish content of interest from localized servers back to a mobile device, all transparently and in real-time to the user. This study evaluates how much more effective users of mobile devices are when the have access to the data they need, both from a personal and professional standpoint (Bernoff, Li, 2008). There has been five years of analysis completed on how to use cyber-foraging to streamline complex selling and services tasks throughout enterprises using this technology (Emmerich, 2007). Middleware's role in the future of mobility enterprise application development and its pervasive adoption is well-documented and known, and will continue to accelerate given the interest in this area by venture capitalists globally (Blair, Coulson, Grace, 2004). This analysis evaluates the advances made in Cloud-based middleware development and its use in enterprise-wide and metro-based network architectures. The third factor this that of usability, an area that has continually be a weakness in the development of mobile-based operating systems and applications. Smaller and lower-resolution screens have made even the simplest applications difficult to use over time. There are significant implications for how the future of mobility will progress based on the development and fine-tuning of operating systems on the usability dimension. The adoption of devices based on operating system is also included in this analysis, as the impact of design and usability standards has an immediate impact on customer adoption and long-term usability. The operating systems including Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows and others are included in the analysis. This study has determined that the greater the level of robustness in middleware the higher the level of cross-platform integration support and stability of legacy applications over time (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). The last section of this analysis includes an assessment of the security aspects of mobility strategies and devices, including the potential of hackers to completely overtake a mobile device and capture al personal data on it. The impact of middleware on the security and stability of any mobility network is evident in how effective Apple has been in creating enterprise-level options for enterprise IT departments to immediately wipe the contents clean off of any iPhone or Ipad that may have confidential data stored on it after it has been lost or stolen (Zhang, Gao, Jacobsen, 2005). This advanced level of functionality is attained through the use of middleware functions and support.

A literature review on the topic of insider threats in cloud computing networks and systems and the costs of transitioning form traditional networks to cloud based systems is provided. Five scholarly sources, including articles from trade magazines and from academic journals, are included in the literature review. Citation is APA style.

It is a fact that computer technology and its advances have brought with it many benefits for companies, in addition to threats. One of the most insidious of these is the threat from insider parties.

Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) have the potential to completely redefine and make more customer-centric any enterprise. The tendency to celebrate technology alone is however short-sighted and lacks awareness of the broader, more strategic issues that surround successful BI and analytics implementations. This is an area of software where the ability to analyze terabytes of data very quickly while also testing hypotheses and evaluating trends can become more of a focus that using these systems for accomplishing strategies and long-term objectives (Todd, 2010). The ability to integrate analytics and Bi into an organization is predicated on having a very clear vision and mission for how a specific BI and analytics application or platform will be used to accelerate an enterprise to its objectives. The foundational elements of change management strategies must be in place as well, as the systems must reflect user needs, preferences and be integral to their roles if the overall system is to achieve its full potential (Todd, 2010). Case studies often provide a useful framework for evaluating how enterprises are getting the greatest value from their BI and analytics investments. Two case studies form the foundation of this analysis, the first detailing Exclusive Resorts, LLC and the second, Marshfield Clinic. Both of these case studies illustrate how critical it is to have a balance of technical and sociotechnical systems design and change management included in the development of any BI and analytics application. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the lessons learned and potential for improvement in both case studies cited, including the need to continually stay vigilant to the needs of those the system was developed and designed for. One of the most fundamental best practices of effective BI and analytics implementations is the development of change management programs and frameworks well in advance of software being customized and implemented (Ghosh, Scott, 2011). The more effective a given change management strategy and program is, the greater the level of ownership a given enterprise system gains during the initial design and implementation phases of development (Todd, 2010). When this occurs the eventual launch of a new BI or analytics systems can attain an 80% or greater adoption rate globally (Ghosh, Scott, 2011). When systems reach this level of adoption, they have the potential to completely re-define the financial and operational performance of an enterprise. Both Exclusive Resorts, LLC and Marshfield Clinic have been able to attain this level of change management as can be seen in how effective their respective BI and analytics systems are in improving the performance of their businesses. As can be seen from both case studies, both have a very high level of authenticity and transparency associated with them, that leads to a correspondingly higher level of trust and adoption by associates in each company (Todd, 2010). Both Exclusive Resorts, LLC and Marshfield Clinic have been able to attain such remarkable success with their BI and analytics applications by concentrating on authenticity, transparency and trust, all powerful catalyst that drive up system adoption and in turn allow these powerful systems to deliver greater results than would have been possible without the sociotechnical change that occurred. The case studies are, in reality, as much about how to manage rapid and significant change as they about the technologies involved in these applications as wlel. With the reduction in fear regarding their jobs, the employees at Exclusive Resorts, LLC are able to use these technologies to better understand customers and improve satisfaction and loyalty. The intelligence gained from using analytics systems at Marshfield Clinic has the potential to save lives. Both transformations of these businesses started at the associate level, with highly effective use of change management strategies and the ability to manage sociotechnical systems to customer needs effectively.

Developing and launching a Data Center as a Service (DaaS) requires a well-defined plan to mitigate risks, manage the integration of clients' content and data management platforms and applications, in addition to a…